The Most Expensive Starbucks Coffee Order | 2014

The Most Expensive Starbucks Coffee Order to Date

Starbucks Gold member Andrew Chifari, age 27, went into his local Starbucks over the weekend with one purpose: to order the biggest, most expensive coffee drink to date — and to not pay a dime for the whole thing. How is such a feat possible?

As a gold member of My Starbucks Rewards, any customer who racks up 12 stars can "redeem any handcrafted beverage, any bottled drink . . . or any food item of your choice" for free. Seeing the obvious loophole in the system, Andrew reaped the benefit for all its worth. He walked up to the counter and informed the barista, "So, this might sound a little weird, but I saw a video on YouTube where a guy orders the most expensive Starbucks drink. I want to beat the record."

The previous winner, a 52-ounce Quadriginoctuple Frap, contained 48 shots of espresso and cost a whopping $47.30. Andrew explains, "It took a few minutes to figure out all the math, but in the end, it took about 55 shots to get us over the $50 line, and we just rounded it up to 60 to make it easy."

Flavor definitely played into the equation for Andrew. "The $47.30 guy put in two bananas, strawberry, matcha powder, pumpkin spice, and lots of other things that probably don't go well together and definitely don't go well with 40 shots of espresso," he says. Andrew went with complementary flavors like chocolate, caramel, and hazelnut to sweeten and enrich his Vanilla Bean Frappuccino. The whole thing only took about 10 minutes to whirl together. All of it went into a massive 128-ounce flower vase that Andrew brought from home.

The staff seemed excited to participate in the venture, and Andrew adds, "I went at a slow time and, fortunately, there were a lot of people working so I didn't back up the line. This location has two of the automatic espresso machines, so it wasn't like someone had to tamp and pull 60 shots manually."

A lethal dose of caffeine is upward of 10 grams. Rough calculations place Andrew's Frap at about 4.5 grams, but the man was not about to drink it all in one sitting. He claims that he "drank about 30 percent the first day." Though he couldn't finish in one sitting, he didn't toss the rest out either. To the Twitter naysayers out there, he clarified, "Still working on it . . . I don't waste coffee."